RANT: huge is a tool the only guy to grow up in sparta work in chicago for two years then come back to work in michigan for years later and still somehow retain a chicago accent like he grew up there. him and yes men brian van ogden and his producer muller have a 3 hour live circle jerk its ridiculous that i am forced to listen to him while at work. FUCK!

anyways why in the blue hell would RR or huge agree to this interview?

ya sorry about the grammar im on my phone so im just trying to write fast. also touche jmblue you are right usually he makes such ridiculous statements about sports it drives me nuts everyday at work but i guess he did accomplish what he was looking for.

I read your posts. It takes 20 extra second to add punctuation and spell out "yeah." The fact that people here actually use grammar and spell words correctly makes this blog different than so many others.

Well I'm sorry my phone usually puts in the commas and things like that, so for the bad grammar I apologize. I hope that I don't burn in hell over my shitty grammar and I hope that someday I'll get my shit together. Despite my bad grammar on my most recent post, I am thinking I still have a good shot at getting accepted to MSU or any other SEC school. Fingers crossed. Have a great day everyone.

ya sorry about the grammar im on my phone so im just trying to write fast. also touche jmblue you are right usually he makes such ridiculous statements about sports it drives me nuts everyday at work but i guess he did accomplish what he was looking for.

Well, this may be the first unforgivable thing RR has said since being fired. It's a really petty way to minimize the obvious accomplishments of Hoke et al. He should stop talking so much. I heard he also said he had nothing but walk-on QBs when he got to Michigan. How can anyone take people like this seriously?

you really expect a supremely confident guy who was head coach of a program that's since had more success than he had with the guys he brought in is going to say something other than that? i'm pretty sure brady's not offended.

You're dead on, Jack, and got me to thinking how Hoke would answer this question. My best guess:

"Welllll, it's hard to know how we'd have done, but for certain, I feel great for the kids-especially the seniors-that have worked their tails off and deserve every bit of that success. So good for them. They deserve it."

I had some experience with some brutal office politics (nothing NEAR what RR went through given the public nature of his job, but enough where I broke one night and cried on my wife's shoulder, which is something I just never do, for better or worse). A retired friend reached out to me in the middle of it all and essentially said to stay classy; in the end, people would see things for what they were. You're ABSOLUTELY RIGHT that you're hurt and want to fire back, but that was some of the best professional advice I've gotten. Sincerely, I'm not trying to knock Rich, but he'd benefit from following that advice as well.

Huge asked RR if he thought that he would have been 10-2. RR said that he did "or better." In the context of the question, it was an appropriate answer. He then acknowledged that certain measurables would need to go their way for that to happen.

RR handled the interview about as well as you could expect. He was confident in himself and the players he recruited. He acknowledged that there needed to be some changes but felt they were on the way to great things. He also made an unsolicited point to praise the new staff on their accomplishments on more than one occasion.

RR was not making it out to be about him versus Hoke, even though Huge was setting him up for that opportunity. If you had actually heard the interview, you would be able to make that determination for yourself. Instead, you make assumptions based on comment on this blog.

The last thing I heard RR say in the interview.... "I don't care to dwell on it." In regards to Huge prodding him about what he might have changed. " I've moved on. They've moved on." Perhaps you should either listen to the complete interview before attacking his character or just.... move on.

Exactly, I heard the interview. Coach Rod always gets his words blown out of proportion. I think he does need to stop doing some of these interviews. His words on print do not do it justice. He tries to be honest and he gets killed for it.

Example, he talks about wanting to play UM and says it gets blown out of proportion about playing UM.

instead of slighting UM he needs to reflect on why he had among the nation's worst defense 3 years running and led the country in negative turnover margin. Why would that have changed in 2011? 10-2 my arse. Maybe 8-4. Maybe.

Hey, another guy took all of the players you recruited and went 10-2. Do you think you could have gone 10-2?

Are you going to say "No, I think we would have went 8-4 and I deserved to get fired?"

All coaches at that level have to be supremely confident in themselves. Poll coaches who have teams in the top 25, I bet you each of them will tell you that but for a few plays, they would be undefeated and in the national title game. If you're anything other than supremely confident and think that you couldn't go 12-0, you should probably get out of the coaching profession.

So should he have said it? Probably not. However, he's already been fired, I'm not sure what else you want.

I love RR and will cheer for him at Zona. I trust when he says he would have been 10-2 or better he is using a hypothetical where the defense and special teams played like they did this year. Unfortunately, we all know that would not have happened but for Hoke, Mattison, Montgomery. Still love the guy and his optimism and am hoping Zona becomes a force in the PAC.

If Hoke, Mattison, Mongomery and Mallory were coaching his defense, then he might have even went undefeated. While we're pretending to live in fantasyland, I'd be married to a supermodel, be a billionaire and buy this blog so I could give myself the most MGo points.

But the fact that it was even mentioned by he and the zona ad tells you how bad Rich wan'ts it. He feels he didn't get the support and the fact is he got more money and resources to do whatever he wanted on the football field at Michigan then 8 other bigten schools ever dream of. He had a larger recruiting budget, top flight facilities, and more money for assistants offered him then 8 other bigten schools and yet he doesn't feel he had support.

don't expect to be competing for National Championships, Rose Bowl berths, and Big Ten Championships either. You're kidding yourself if you think Rich Rod received all the support he needed and deserved as a coach at Michigan.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that a lot of those "Little 8" schools beat us during RR's three years. If it was just a matter of us not being able to compete with OSU and PSU, he'd probably still be here. But it wasn't. We struggled against every conference opponent.

That has nothing to do with coaching and teaching players to play the game. I'm sick of hearing about how he never got the support blah blah blah. Fact is the same defense he had that was #110 in the country is now #18 and the offense is still very good.

This Toledo thing is really starting to piss me off. Did you see Steve Threet throw a pick 6 to cost us the game? If he could complete ANY kind of pass we probably win but he was terrible. He transfered to ASU and showed no improvement what-so-ever.

GERG, though, was an unforgivable sin....damn RRod for that silver haired bastard.

And there is no way he would have been 10-2. 9-3 at best but we would have had a HELL of an offense. It would have been OSU every game (probably even MSU).

Wasn't the pick six in the first quarter? We couldn't rally from 7 down in the 1st quarter vs Toledo? I was a supporter for the most part, but give it up. RR's time here was awful.... No d, turnovers galore, etc, etc.

What does Three and Out have to do with calling a fake punt from deep in your own territory against MSU, and then, when it fails miserably, blaming it on your poor punter saying in the post-game presser, "he was supposed to kick it"?

I don't follow your reasoning. If, as suggested above, RR received better support from his administration than every other school in the league besides OSU and PSU, how would that justify regularly losing to the other schools? Against Big Ten schools other than OSU/PSU - the schools that we didn't have an institutional disadvantage against - his record was still a dismal 6-12.

RR was treated badly here, no doubt. A lot of so-called Michigan Men should be ashamed of themselves. BUT, Bacon REALLY glosses over the defensive woes and general incompetence surrounding the program under RR.

Stuff like having 2 kids play with the same jersey number in a game and eat a penalty... I've never seen that penalty in any other game in at least 5 years. Vast numbers of lost fumbles, special teams catastrophes, inability to make kicks, joking about Lombardi being unable to fix the defense, joking about parking lot tryouts for the kicking job... these are not the signs of a well-run program.

At the end of the day, reputed backdoor sniping by Carr, English, et. al. would be silenced in an instant with a winning record in the Big Ten or a win over MSU or OSU.

What kind of support were Lloyd Carr or the Michigan community supposed to offer that would help players tackle better? Or help RR not bottlekneck his coordinators into running 3-3-5? Would a warm press conference with Braylon Edwards have made our secondary stop giving up 50 yard plays every other game? He had his own chances to shut up his critics, and didn't.

At the end of the day, the anti-RR faction was not calling the defensive plays nor were they coaching special teams.

Wish him the best in AZ, but I'm getting tired of the "if-only-Michigan-folks-had-liked-RR-we-would-have-won-more-games" meme. It honestly is incomprehensible to me.

when any man has to take personal responsibility for the results of his work and getting the things he wants. I have never heard RR blame anyone else for the failure of his team. Why do so many others?

If my boss doesn't like me, I need take responsibilty for that and try to change that. If he doesn't support me, I need to do things he supports. If I'm about to lose my job because I can't find afford the assistant I need to hire, I have to find a way to afford him or I lose my job.

I loved RR as Michigan's coach and I truly believe we had turned the corner. I couldn't wait to see what it would be like the next few years under his direction. Sadly, it didn't work out. The truth is RR is responsible for that.

Obviously, Brandon and others, myself included, are also responsible for that.

I didn't hear the interview, but the point made above about Rich needing to be reflecting on what he can do differently for Arizona is a great point. Granted, he isn't as likely to be talking about that on a radio show broadcast back in Michigan. On the other hand, the Gibson hiring is ominous.

He's gotta recruit defense and impact size on defense like he means it. USC will score 100 points on them if he approaches defense recruiting like he did here. Those other offenses will clean up in that conference too.

I hope he learned that. Watching his intro press conference, it sure seemed like a guy that was set on proving himself the genius once again. For Arizona's sake, you have to hope that doesn't mean he will try to ram the WVA square approach into the big conference round hole. That strategy won't end well for him or his program.

Those guys still decided to come here after Carr left and Rodriguez was hired.

Just frustrating to hear the same people who bitched that we were heading in the wrong direction because Rodriguez's gang of tiny slot receivers couldn't compete in the Big Ten and his gimmick offense couldn't be successful and he didn't even bother to recruit defensive players and OMG attrition, etc., etc. now continue to assert that we were destined for doom with Rich Rodriguez at the helm of the program, when all their previous complaints have proved to be baseless.

For people who were wrong about everything else to continue to suggest we still would have sucked simply because they think Rich Rodriguez isn't a good football coach (based on the results of a three year run with a team suffering from major roster problems) is kind of silly.

For keeping guys that were already on their way and keeping them (throw Campbell in there too who was committed, de-committed, then committed again). But then you give him credit for Countess too. Who by that reasoning should be credited to Hoke. Or to Rich and the other guys (like Molk), to Carr. When in reality we both know it's a mix; that guys who commit for one coach obviously are credited to one coach, but the new coach who keeps him deserves credit for that too. Just when you use examples, they should be fair and consistent.

But people didn't spent three years complaining that not enough defensive players were "committing to play for Michigan" or that the ones who did were too small or didn't have enough stars next to their name and that even if they did Rich Rodriguez was forcing them to leave the program through his sheer awfulness.

People bitched and moaned while Rodriguez did a pretty damn good job filling the roster with defensive talent. Rather than acknowledge their mistake, they look for alternate ways to express their rage toward a guy who walked into a shitty situation and walked out leaving us a very good football team to enjoy.

Some people might have, I dont think I ever did. You are right, but you dont have to get into it with these people.

slightly off topic, I get really sad when listening to Coach Rod. You could feel the passion. I hate that Huge guy, what a joke. He had to insert Josh Groban in at the end which totally made Coach feel like an as5

rich rod shldnt talk to media ever. he doesnt learn...hes the same now as he was when he came to aa. hes an excuse maker...he loves to take all the credit for anything...except when he sucks. sorry rich...brady fixed what u destroyed...at least b man enough to give him props

At some point, he's going to have to be an adult and refuse to answer questions about Michigan, quit making hypothetical "what if" predictions about Michigan, get over it, and focus on his job at Arizona. And a good way to start that would be to quit taking interview requests from media outlets and radio shows in Michigan.

We moved on, we're in the BCS, everyone is on the same page with Hoke and co., and he's got himself a new program to worry about. Enough is enough.

RR still has not learned how to deal with the media. You would think with his experience here, Three and Out, and a year at CBS that he would be more media savvy. Hoke is way better than him at handling these situations. He needs to stop making excuses about his time at Michigan and focus on Arizona, or he is going to be unemployed in 3 years again.

quoting him (an excuse he made) when you say he's an excuse maker? Or are you responding to pundit's and poster's excuses regarding him?

Maybe I'm biased, but I think RR has been pretty straight forward that things just didn't work out. To be fair about the 10 or more comment, RR said something very similar to the 10 win season just after he was fired.

I seem to remember him saying something along the lines that he was dissappointed because he thought we had just turned the corner and could start competing for BCS bowls and championships.

It's pretty much win-win, isn't it? when you're no longer responsible for their performance. You set the bar insanely high for your replacement; most likely he fails to clear it and you point to how much better things would have been if you hadn't been fired, and if he somehow does meet your prediction it's all because you set him up to succeed.

Or that's the theory, I suppose. It somehow comes off differently in practice.

People asked him before the season and he said this team had a lot more talent, depth, and experience and could/should be expected to win 10 or so games. Everybody got mad at him then and said he was trying to undermine Brady Hoke by raising expectations to absurd levels that no mortal could possibly achieve. The team won ten games, easily could have won them all, and now people are still mad at Rich Rodriguez for thinking he built a really good team here.

We were lucky enough to hire two great head coaches in a row. The only people who need to move on are the ones who are still angry because they think Rich Rodriguez ruined Michigan football.

He came in and forced everyone on the team to begin sucking at football. Then only through the sheer magic of Brady Hoke's getting it-ness were we able to instantly become a 10-2 football team the moment he was forced out the door.

Harry Kipke followed up back-to-back national titles with a terrible three year stretch that led to his firing. 1933 was the first year of that stretch, where the only win was the Willis Ward game against Georgia Tech.

Not to get too wrapped up in the past, but it is interesting to look back on the season and wonder how it would have gone with RR at the helm. I like the guy and don't like all the hate talk directed toward him. I have to admit though, I wonder if he really could have pulled off 10 wins. I just don't think so, personally. Moar points scored throughout the season? Probably. But moar points scored on us (even if he had brought in GERGs replacement)? Also, probably. Also for example, does the team beat Ohio with RR as coach? I don't know, no one does. But it can be interesting to speculate on how things would have gone with our ex in command.